A Precise Note Chapter 19 - Expectations

Picture a billiard table, Izuku slowly sipped from his coffee, as his mind replayed words from the book: ‘An Essay of Quirk-Related Psychological Phenomena and the Argument of Determinism.’

Imagine yourself, a player of the game of pool. You raise your pool cue, you smooth it with chalk, you aim, and you prime, and you strike dead and center. From that single moment, the moment you struck the cue ball, the entire future of the table was, in principle, determinable. Every collision, every rebound, every clash, every ball that ultimately enters the hole is a predetermined effect, created by a calculated cause.

The ball cannot choose a different path once it is struck. Any who would stand and scream and say otherwise is a person whose belief in the impossible would be a praiseworthy attribute better suited to religion than philosophy.

Many reject Determinism because it provides them with an uncomfortable truth, and it unwinds the greatest lie.

It is cruel to accept that we are but biological puppets, driven and controlled by strings of genetic predispositions and predilections created from the moment of our conception. Neither one's intellect nor appearance is chosen, nor are one's fancies and likes decided. One does not decide at will to weep with joy at daffodils fluttering in the breeze, or wail with grief at the sight of Ozymandias' feet battered by sand. There is none, not one, who can taste the sweetness of chocolate and speak to their limbic system, saying: "Thus, now, brain, I have decided this shall taste sour, henceforth and hereafter."

The words echoed in his mind and played back over and over again as his date placed down her coffee cup.

“So, I'm, like... totally excited."

The reason why Izuku thought of that book was because, now, there were things that Toru did, that she likely did not know she was doing, that were a result of actions she could not control.

She does not make eye contact.

Toru was looking at him, but not looking at him. She did not make eye contact. Not once. Not ever. Not when she walked through the doors of the coffee shop, in a bright pink crop-top and a skirt that cut low at her waist that would have been considered dangerously risque, if anyone could actually see her thighs. Izuku, who could see her thighs, had his brows shooting high for a moment before he glanced around. No one could see what he saw, so he was the only one who got a tempting view of everything.

She had not made eye contact even as she jokingly asked, “Like what you see?" Performed a twirl and squealed, “Excited! I'm excited! I've always wanted to say that! Oh! I can't believe it!"

Even as she repeated how excited she was, as though he could not see that she was excited, she had not made eye contact. Not once. No one could see her eyes before, so such a basic human thing like making eye contact when speaking to someone or trying to connect with them was a thing she had never learnt to do, and a thing she did not know how to do.

Even as they sat opposite each other, Toru stared at him, but she did not look at him.

“You know... I can see you staring."

“Oh! Oh! You can! Right! Sorry! Embarrassed!"

She grimaces openly, scowls openly, stares openly, frowns openly...

She never brushes her hair out of her eyes, scratches her cheek, or adjusts her expressions...

“So..." she cleared her throat. “What do you do for fun, Izuku?"

“I like to read," Izuku said, smiling. “You?"

“I read too! What do you read?"

“Science. Philosophy. Art. Literature. Anatomy. Biology, and a few others."

“Wow... that's..." She stared, openly, in awe, her mouth dropping. Her brows furrowed, and her face was marked with anxiety. Nervousness. "Um... I just read like... comics. Or... manga. Haha..."

“I read those too."

“Oh!" Her face beamed. Joy. Relief. “One of my favorites is the Phantasmal Family! There's this superheroine in it called Invisi-Girl, and she can make force fields with her quirk, which I always thought was cool, so..."

Toru spoke eagerly and earnestly, and Izuku answered in turn. In doing so, there was a turning in his stomach, a knot in his throat, an uneasy, irritating sensation of wrongness he could not place. 

Toru was more than an open book. 

Her smile was clear to see, as was her frown, as was the furrowing of eyebrows deep in confusion, as was the glint in her eyes upon a mischievous feeling, as was the uncertainty and doubt that came on faltering upon a question, as was this, as was that, as was everything and as was all. An open book was less open, and less readable, less legible, and less understandable than Hagakure Toru. 

She hid nothing, not a single emotion, because she had no experience hiding them and because she had never needed to hide them. As he could see it all, he led the date perfectly. He would judge, by the crease in her brows, what topics made things uncomfortable, and by the glint and spark in her eyes, what topic made things flow smoothly like liquid through a straw. 

He was writing a test upon which the answers were written before him, and even so, it was as though he were cheating by following them.

“Wow. I've never... had anyone really get me, like you do, Izuku. Blushing!"

As the short coffee date reached a close, her dilated pupils, rose-red cheeks, elevated vocal pitch, and twiddling thumbs spoke words in a language that Izuku needed no interpreter to explain. They were more blatant on her than on any other, for doing something that should have been 'common sense,' such as putting on a 'mask' for such emotions, or at least hiding such displays, did not register on a psychological level to her as a necessity.

Why?

Because no one had ever been able to see her expressions.

It was not his fault that he could see her, and he could not undo his ability to see her. It was not her fault that she was invisible, and she could not make herself visible. Yet, because of those factors, there was little doubt that Toru would consider this the best date she had ever had.

Whereas he had only done the bare minimum.

Do I tell her?

He couldn't. If she knew that the only reason the date went so well was because he could see all her expressions and emotions, it wouldn't change anything. She couldn't practice hiding those emotions or controlling her expressions in the mirror because she could not see them. She could not see her own reflection. She could not hide her thoughts and feelings from him. She would never be able to hide her thoughts and feelings from him.

Why bother telling her?

“Do you think I'd look good in a bathing suit, Izuku? Blushing! I've never worn any, so... I always wondered..."

“You've never worn a bathing suit, Toru-san?" Izuku asked, raising his coffee to his lips. “Not even while swimming?"

“Ah... I don't... um..."

Her features faltered. There was discomfort.

“I'm not... fond of swimming."

Izuku stopped mid-sip. “Toru-san… You can't swim?"

“No, no, I can! But... It's more like I wasn't initially allowed to learn how to swim," she said. “Lifeguards and coaches didn't let me. They said, we can't see her! How are we supposed to know if she starts drowning? So, well, my mom said, ‘she'll just wear a scuba suit' and while other kids entered the kiddie pool in trunks and tops, I'd have to be kitted out in a special wetsuit with an oxygen tank. The lifeguards and swimming coaches didn't want to get into trouble if I drowned on their watch. They called me 'Scuba Girl' for weeks. It was so embarrassing! Embarrassed!" 

She poked her thumbs together.

“But I had to learn. I needed to learn. My mom said that if I didn't know how to swim and I ever entered water by accident, no one would be able to see me. Only my head would be above water, so all they'd see would be clothes just floating along. My mouth would be filled with water so I wouldn't be able to scream for help, and no one would ever know I was in there, and no one would ever jump in to save a set of floating clothes."

Izuku steadily put down the cup, ignoring the hoarseness that almost made its way into his voice.

“Do you often have... accidents?"

“No! No, no, I don't! Really!" Toru said, slowly. "Um, but there was this one time as a kid, I fell in a playground and scratched my leg. I didn't think much of it. But it started to hurt, and hurt, and then, I fell really, really sick, and had to be rushed to the hospital. The doctors couldn't tell what was wrong with me at first because they couldn't... well, you know..."

She gestured to her body. 

“They wanted to run tests, but it was difficult for the phlebotomist to draw my blood. They couldn't see the veins. And, um, due to the way my quirk refracts light, even the vein finders couldn't work. So they had to use an ultrasound machine to find my veins, and pricked, and pricked, again and again and again. I think... it must have been over fifty times before they got it right. I'm um... not fond of needles either."

Izuku's heart was beating faster.

“Anyway, during that process, they found out my blood was invisible! I mean, in hindsight, my sweat can't be seen and... well, even my mouth is invisible, so if I open it, no one can see the inside either... I just don't know why I thought my blood would be different. In the end, they said, they couldn't do standard tests with lasers or spectrophotometry on something they couldn't see, and had to send the blood sample to experts overseas who somehow could. My parents had to pay... a lot."

Izuku’s hand, below the table, trembled.

“By the time everything was done, and the tests came back, the doctors said I had sepsis. That tiny scratch was actually a cut  and it had gotten infected really badly. Sure, it had hurt a lot, but I didn't think it was that bad. The doctors said I'd have to use special equipment that allows for full-body scans every time I go to the hospital, but, well, those aren't cheap. They said it was important. Because even a papercut... or a scratch, if I leave it, if I can't see it..."

Toru trailed off.

“But... haha... that's just... You know... a one-time thing... and well.... um... no need to worry about it! Really! Happy!"

There were tears in the corners of her eyes. Izuku gently moved his hand towards it. Toru flinched.

“Oh... right... You can... actually see my—"

She choked.

“I...I’m sorry… I forgot. No one usually… sees when I… cry."

She sniffled.

“Haha, sorry. I... I ruined the date, didn't I? God, Toru. I messed everything up. I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

Izuku got up and moved towards her, holding her hand gently in his, and squeezing. “This is the best date I’ve ever had.”

“I— It is? How is that—”

He wiped her tears away with his thumb and finger.

“My last date ended with the girl running away from me.”

“No,” she said, scandalized.

“Yes,” Izuku nodded sagely.

Toru giggled. “What— what did you do?”

“I exceeded her expectations.”

“Is that… like, slang for… something?”

Izuku smiled. “Do you want it to be?”

She blinked, and then stared, then her face went red. “Um… ah… maybe…?”

“On our next date. I’ll let you know,” he said. “It’s a promise.”

“Next date…?”

The gears in her brain turned.

“Yes… Our next date! I’ll um… keep you to it! Grinning!”

It was as Toru had told him, when they’d met.

She truly was the girl with the world’s brightest smile.

XXXXXX - A Precise Note - XXXXXX

“Ka-san, did you mess around in romantic relationships when you were younger?”

Midoriya Inko choked on her glass of water, coughing and hacking, as she snapped her head towards her son. “W—what?”

“Sorry, that was a weird question, Ka-san,” the boy shook his head. “I shouldn’t have asked in the middle of dinner.”

Inko opened her mouth, then closed it. Sitting down to eat dinner together, discussing as a family, talking about his plans once he entered UA, a year ago, all of this would have been a dream. It would have come out of her wildest, deepest, purest dream. That they could joke around and talk like this was already a miracle, one she was eternally grateful for. Now, however, there seemed to be a bigger, more impossible miracle happening.

A year ago, she worried her son would go through life without a single girl interested in him. Inko was not blind. She watched the news. She knew how people without quirks were discriminated against. She knew, sometimes, there could be power imbalances in relationships between quirkless individuals and their partners. She had worried and fretted and panicked that Izuku wouldn’t find himself in one of those terrible horror stories she heard about or saw on the news. There were a lot of concerns with being a quirkless child, and not being able to be loved by women, she feared, would turn her darling little boy into one of those women-hating involuntary celibates she’d heard horrid things about.

Hearing him now, asking her about romantic relationships was like having ice-cold water poured over her. Those fears were gone, but a set of fears and unease remained in her heart. Considering her son’s personality, no, knowing her son’s personality, she would not put it past him to try and ‘help’ as many girls as he could, however he could.

Girls who would no doubt take his kind heart and play with it. She most definitely did not want to see anything of the sort happen. She was worried, but at the same time, she wasn’t sure how to broach a question this sensitive.

“Izuku-kun, do you have… a girl you’re interested in?”

“Something like that.” 

Inko watched her son use his chopsticks to deliberately separate grains of rice on his plate in silence, and she was conflicted as to whether to probe further or not. Watching his bowl, and seeing how terrifyingly organized the meal was, she questioned when it was this habit of his started, of having to organize his food before he could eat it, and felt a stab of guilt that she’d not tried to help him do so when serving the meal.

No, there was more than a stab of guilt. Glancing around the dining room, where everything was sparkling with a reflective glint, she could not remember the last time she had done chores. Izuku did it all before she could get the chance. He cleaned, mopped, polished, did the laundry, vacuumed the rugs, and waxed the floors.

More so, her son had gotten the top score in the UA Entrance Exams. She herself had scarcely believed it. Her hands had trembled towards her lips once she saw it, and she had wept tears so freely and clung on to him so tightly she was afraid he would burst in her hands.

Her son, her baby, whom she had so many worries for, so many fears for, was growing slowly into his own.

The rate of his growth, however, worried her. Inko was afraid he would grow too fast.

“If I brought a girl over, would you mind?”

How could she? Her son’s grades were the best, his sense of responsibility was great, he did chores, worked hard, was diligent, handsome, talented, and charitable. If she refused such a request, wouldn’t she be seen as unreasonable? There were problematic children out there who gave their parents headaches for days, but ever since that incident… Izuku had been…

Perfect.

Too perfect.

He was the perfect child.

It scared her. She knew Quirks changed a lot of things about people, but this level of change deeply worried her. His asking about relationships and his request to bring a girl over were somehow the most ‘normal’ requests he had made in recent memory.

“I wouldn’t mind, Izuku-kun.”

The boy had finished his meal in the middle of their conversation and got up, kissing her on the cheek. “Thanks, ka-san.”

The boy cleaned the dishes in record-breaking time.

“Ka-san, regarding tou-san…”

The air in the room chilled. Inko’s stomach dropped.

“No, forget I said anything.”

Izuku departed for his room. Inko let out the breath she was holding. There were a lot of conversations she could have with Izuku, but that one was not one of them. She could not bring them up. Not since the argument she had had, over the phone, years ago, with her husband, when she had yelled and screamed at him, unaware that Izuku was at the door, listening to every word.

“You keep saying you’re busy with work trips! Izuku-kun needs his father! You can’t keep avoiding us because he’s quirkless—”

The accusation had been baseless. She only suspected it. She only suspected, but had no definite proof. Suspected that his ‘constant work’ and ‘need to travel’ were only excuses to leave a household that was suffocating. That they were excuses to avoid a wife who had put on weight from the stress of thinking about her son, and a son who was constantly dejected and downcast because he was born ‘crippled.’

A part of her hoped and wished that her husband really just had been busy with work.

She really, truly did.

XXXXXX - A Precise Note - XXXXXX

Within his bedroom, Izuku stared at several psychosomatic illusions of chalkboards, filled with formulae, calculations, and codes.

Toru’s Invisibility is the result of a Heteromorphic Quirk, which alters her DNA on a fundamental level.

On one of the boards were the words: H-Gene. 

Compared to someone like Himiko, modifying or altering the H-Gene is different. Even someone with the ability to ‘negate’ Quirks, like the Underground Hero, Eraser Head, wouldn’t be able to negate Toru’s invisibility and make her visible because of this H-Gene. Her Invisibility is like a ‘passive ability’ that does not require conscious activation through the Quirk Factor.

Though the refined trigger would affect it, it would only strengthen her invisibility. Giving her Trigger, rather than making her able to control her invisibility, would likely enhance it, and make her completely invisible even to the wavelengths of light I can see.

Without running tests on her blood, I can’t risk it. If the only person who can see her suddenly loses the ability to see her… it would crush her.

Izuku mentally cleaned one board and then began to write on it.

In theory, with Precision, I should be able to modify even the H-Gene… creating a ‘backdoor’ into her genetics the same way I did with Suzume. However, this will require copious amounts of experimentation…

Izuku twirled an imaginary piece of chalk between his fingers, mumbling as he did.

He could not, in good conscience, tell Toru, ‘I can help your condition, but you need to let me flood your womb with seminal fluids on a constant basis.’

She would either think he was insane, think he was making fun of her, or think he was an absolute sleaze who was preying on her hope just to get in her pants.

Would an oral method work?

Izuku began writing on the board.

Due to the first-pass metabolism, a substance's concentration is significantly reduced before it reaches the general bloodstream that circulates throughout the body. This occurs primarily in the liver and gastrointestinal tract wall itself, meaning the effectiveness is crippled significantly…

His feat of altering a portion of Suzume’s Quirk Factor could not be replicated if she had simply swallowed his seed, due to how ingesting things functioned. It would have dissolved in her stomach and small intestine, and her liver’s extensive network of enzymes would metabolize it long before it could perform its task.

Perhaps oral transmucosal absorption instead? Either a sublingual administration or a buccal administration?

This meant they wouldn’t swallow. They absolutely could not swallow. They instead needed to let it… linger in their mouths like a lozenge put under the tongue. To confirm this theory, he would need to meet a girl and ask them ‘Do you mind letting me fill your mouth with my sperm for science?’

Himiko was the only person Izuku could think of who would accept such a request. However, she was, problematically, the one person he could not use to conduct this test because her body was already altered by his DNA due to how much of his blood she drank on a daily basis.

Maybe Saiko-chan…?

Izuku rubbed his chin slowly. If it were for the sake of scientific discovery, in theory, Saiko would agree. However, considering how she reacted after kissing him, she would probably freeze like a deer in headlights and flee the moment he made the request. No, it was likely she would slap him.

Who would be willing to gargle my sperm for experimentation?

His options were either to find a girl other than Himiko willing to let his sperm linger in her mouth or to tell Toru frankly that he would need to fill her belly with seed for the sake of alleviating her invisibility.

His Quirk and his Precision were in his body, and this was merely a way of transferring them and using them to help others. Izuku theorised that if there was someone out there capable of altering biological matter, they would likely be able to use portions of other people to create a drug that would contain their Quirks in a much more refined manner than his own methods. Such a person might even be able to take the Quirk Factor of certain individuals and make ‘bullets’ out of it that, once fired, would function identically to the Quirk of the individual.

He doubted that he would ever meet a person with such a quirk, and he had no other option but to rely on his current methods. Sperminal fluid was the least disgusting and most socially acceptable of things that could be swallowed by others. Not everyone was like Himiko, who could drink blood without care. Asking others to drink his sweat would be even more disgusting, let alone any other excretions.

Whatever it takes.

Izuku flicked his wrist, and a floating hallucination of a calendar formed in front of him.

April: School Year Begins.

May: UA Sports Festival

June: Mid-Semester Tests

July: First Semester Examinations

Then, he went about clarifying the dates and adding notes to each one.

April 4th: School Officially Commences.

April 20th: Kacchan’s Birthday

June 10th: All Might’s Birthday

June 16th: Toru’s Birthday

July 4th: Mom’s Birthday

July 15th: My Birthday

The UA Entrance Exams took place on the 26th of February. He turned towards the calendar and the date.

March 14th.

There were exactly three weeks left before he would begin his year. He made a list of things he planned to accomplish in his first semester.

Gain Access to UA Facilities and their laboratories.

Maintain high grades.

Search UA for the person who tried to kill me.

Work with Saiko to gradually begin the process of clinical trials and tests of the modified Trigger through official channels.

Go on dates with Saiko (possibly?).

Go on dates with Toru.

Go on dates with Himiko.

Find someone willing to experiment with my oral theory.

Begin work on the ‘Consent Drug.’

He had a stacked school year ahead of him.

Izuku stared at the list and recalled Toru’s brilliant smile.  Slowly, Izuku added another item.

Discover the true limits of my ‘Precision’ Quirk. 

Was perfection in a human being possible? Izuku did not believe so. It was impossible for anything to be perfect. Thus, he did not believe his quirk was misnamed. However, if a Venn Diagram of ‘precision’ and ‘perfection’ were drawn in the sand, there would be many things that overlapped. 

If he indeed had a quirk which could mimic, even fifty, or ninety percent of the concept of perfection…

He recalled Himiko’s words.

“It makes Izuku-kun a god.”

Izuku ran his hand through his hair.

Whatever it takes.

He had told himself those words, but he had not fathomed the implications of where it would take him. If whatever it took meant shedding the very notion of his humanity… could he still do it?

Izuku did not know.

One way or another, he would find out.